One of twelve projects at the Minciu Sodas virtual laboratory.

Features of Structures for Thinking

Effects of structure on thinking, and what these effects determine about a general format for information.  Kestas Augutis had an idea for "3 Books" by which a school child could write her thoughts in a sequence to create her own chronicle, in a hierarchy to create her own thesaurus, and in a network to create her own encyclopedia.  By arranging ideas in a sequence, we distinguish between the strong and the weak ideas, in a hierarchy - the broad and the narrow, and in a network - the vague and the clear ideas.  Such effects let us understand what a sequence, hierarchy, and network mean with regard to the arrangement of thoughts, and how best to formalize these structures in defining a standard for notes.  Andrius Kulikauskas presented a first version of such a standard to the Unified Knowledge Language work group at the January, 1999 meeting of the Knowledge Management Consortium International, and to the Infrared Mobile Computing work group at the April, 1999 meeting of the Infrared Data Association.  Of special interest to: Educators, programming language creators.

Generating Ideas

[What kind of obstacles or problems do you come up against in writing down and organizing thoughts, as well as creating new ones?]  It takes a lot more time to describe an idea in writing, and sometimes visual information is needed, namely drawing pictures. However, when I write about an idea I find that the act of writing generates more ideas probably because I have to impose some structure on my thoughts. [8/99, Charles Cave]

[Why do you think thoughts should be written down?] To develop the ideas by forcing yourself to write out as much as possible about the idea. I read in a course on freelance journalism that if you get an idea for a story to write a few
paragraphs of the story in your notebook to develop it. [8/99, Charles Cave]

On Computerized Visual Psychological Tools by Kari Kuutti, a position paper for the CHI'97 workshop on "Interactive Systems for Supporting the Emergence of Concepts and Ideas" [http://bashful.lut.ac.uk/chi-wshop/Proceedings/Kuutti.html,12/99, Andrius Kulikauskas]

Writing as Creative Design by Mike Sharples, mike@cogs.sussex.ac.uk, examines the relation between writing and thinking, and includes the cycle of engagement and reflection, and a table comparing various writing media.
[http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/mike/wa/writingdesign.html, 12/99, Andrius Kulikauskas]

Locating Weak Spots

[Do you have any methods for locating a needed thought among all of your thoughts?] cfr use of Ishikawe in TQM. Organising your thoughts in a structured way indicates "weak spots". [8/99, Mil Rosseau]

Preserving Ideas

[Why do you think thoughts should be written down?] To protect against forgetting the ideas. [8/99, Charles Cave]

[Why do you think thoughts should be written down?] Your brain is not a parking lot for good ideas.  Once written down, you can free "brain space" for new activities. [8/99, Mil Rosseau]

Creating Conditions

Naming, describing, inheritance, and categorization I eventually recognized as having a "tree" or hierarchical structure.  Environmental and internal influences I eventually recognized created a whole series of container and component conditions on an object. [11/99, Roy Roebuck]

Relating Parental and Descendant Lines

...the lineage/classifications/categories of their parental and descendant lines... [11/99, Roy Roebuck]

Expressing Changes in Objects

I eventually recognized that sequentiality relates to the predecessor/successor relations between various objects in the chain of
events, represented by an "arrow of time", and that chronology, also represented by an "arrow of time", relates to the past/history, present/status, and future/plan/speculative changes in the objects themselves... [11/99, Roy Roebuck]

Relating Containers and Components

 ...the associative relations with their environment/containers and internals/components. [11/99, Roy Roebuck]

Identifying Influences

One significant element of perceiving the world using this "object model" is that it allows you to easily identify up those things that might influence another object, resulting in the ability to shift that other object to the center of your awareness.  This is what is meant by "multicentric".  In human terms, it can best be described as "putting yourself in someone else's shoes", or seeing the world from their viewpoint. [12/99, Roy Roebuck]

Becoming Aware of Relations

Mindmapping by Tony Buzan, according to the website for Mindmanager, uses the following principles:
  1. Use emphasis (use a central image, secondary images, many colors, three dimensional images, link physical senses, appropriate spacing, vary font size)
  2. Use association (use symbols colors, codes, arrows (within and across branches) to highlight relations among ideas)
  3. Be clear (emphasize the hierarchy)
  4. Develop a personal style
  5. Layout
  6. Use hierarchy
  7. Use numerical order (to arrange branches, perhaps to set priorities)
The intent of Mindmapping is to bring together the logical left brain and the visual/creative right brain to improve memory and productivity. [http://www.mindman.com, 12/99, Andrius Kulikauskas]

Collaborating

How can WWW-based groupware better support critical thinking in CSCL? by D. R. Newman, Queen's University Belfast, Information Management Dept., d.r.newman@qub.ac.uk [http://www.qub.ac.uk/mgt/papers/discussion/wwwcscl.html, 12/99, Andrius Kulikauskas]